How to Use WP-o-Matic

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WP-o-Matic is a powerful source of condensing multiple sources of RSS feeds into one website.

Let’s say you run a radio show and want to condense the blogs of all your show hosts. Or you run a company and want to condense all your employee’s blogs into a company blog. Or you personally run a podcast, a website, a newsletter, etc and want to condense them all into one blog.

Instead of having to go into all these sources individually to copy and paste the posts, WP-o-Matic will allow you to easily download all their RSS feeds in one place and automatically post the resulting feed.

Here’s how to setup and use WP-o-Matic.

Step 1: Download and Install WP-o-Matic plugin

Go to your plugins tab and do a search for WP-o-Matic. Click Install to install the plugin.

Step 2: Go to WP-o-Matic’s Settings

To begin the setup process, go to your Settings tab and go to WP-o-Matic’s settings.

Step 3: Run the Simplepie Test

The first thing you need to do when you install WP-o-Matic is install Simplepie. Basically this makes sure your server will work with WP-o-Matic. Most major servers will pass the test.

Click next after completing the test. It should just take 30 seconds.

Step 4: Check Your Time Settings

Make sure your time settings are correctly set. WP-o-Matic needs to time its updates, so getting your time settings right is essential.

Step 5: Install Cron Job

This is the trickiest part of the installation. In order for WP-o-Matic to work, you need to install what’s called a “cron job,” which is basically a recurring command given the server. This has to be installed onto the server, not in WordPress.

When you get to Step 3 of the setup process, you’ll see a line of code like this:

Each server will have a different way to setup a cron job. Here we’ll just show how it’s done in Hostgator. Most other hosts will have a similar installation process.

First log into your web host and go to the cPanel. Then find the cron job tab. If you can’t find it, press CTRL+F and type in “cron”.

Next, you’ll either paste in the whole code, including the numbers and asterisks, or you’ll have to translate them into their respective time fields.

The */20 * * * * part of the code is the time part of the code. The rest is the Unix code that’s to be executed at the time specified by the first part of the code.

In Hostgator, you’ll need to specify that the command is to be executed every 20 minutes, then paste in the code in the “command” box.

Again, in other servers you might just copy and paste the whole code. In hostgator, you need to break up the time part of the code, then paste the rest into the command box.

This is the trickiest part of the installation. If you have difficulty, just email your webhost and a tech support admin will likely be able to assist you.

After the cron job is installed, your WP-o-Matic plugin setup is complete. Next you’ll need to setup your RSS feeds.

Step 6: Add a Campaign

It’s time to setup your first campaign. Click on “Add Campaign” on the left hand side of the WP-o-Matic settings.

Step 7: Basic Setup

Give your campaign a name. The name’s only visible to you. Check the box to make sure the campaign is active and give your campaign an ID if you want.

Step 8: Enter Your Feeds

Navigate to the Feeds tab. Enter up to four feeds. Any time a new post appears on one of these feeds, it’ll then automatically be posted to your blog.

In general, it’s best to just have one feed per campaign. That way, you can disable the whole campaign without interfering with the rest.

The exception is if feeds are very close in nature. Say you’re running a company blog with three people: Jared, Kacey and Max. If Kacey and Max only have 1 blog each, you’ll put them into separate campaigns. But if Jared had two, you might just put both of Jared’s blogs into the same campaign.

Step 9: Categories & Rewrites

In the Categories tab, select one of the categories to put the posts under.

The rewrites tab is strictly optional. It allows you to substitute words imported from the feed for other words.

For example, if you wanted to substitute all swear words for less offensive words, you could. Most people would just leave this tab blank.

Step 10: Options

The options tab allows you to customize a lot of how WP-o-Matic behaves. Each of these options comes with an explanation underneath.

Step 11: Submit & Fetch

Click the submit button in the upper right to finish your campaign setup. Assuming everything was setup properly, you’ll see a completed setup box like this:

At this point, WP-o-Matic will automatically fetch new posts from the RSS feeds and populate your blog with those posts.

If you want WP-o-Matic to automatically fetch blog posts now, just click “fetch it now” and it’ll collect the last 15 posts from those feeds.

All this setup shouldn’t take more than 60 minutes, assuming no troubles with the cron job. Now your blog will automatically pull new content from these RSS feeds, with little to no work from you until you choose to pause the campaign.

How to Use Feedburner for Blogs

by Nicole Munoz

Feedburner has a ton of built-in tools designed to help blog owners share their feed better. Whether you want to ping other services when you post or allow other blog owners to share your feed, Feedburner makes it easy.

In this guide, we’ll walk through all of FeedBurner’s tools that allow you to publicize and share your feed more effectively. To start, you’ll need to already have created a feed in Feedburner.

Accessing the Publicize Tools

To access the publicize tools, just click “Publicize” along the top navigation.

To navigate to the specific tool you want to use, just click one of the services under the Services navigation bar on the right.

The Headline Animator

The headline animator will create an RSS feed box that’ll automatically put the newest headlines in. You can place this box on a website for example and every time someone visits, they’ll see the headline of your newest post.

Just set your options for how you want the box to look. A preview of how your box will look will appear towards the bottom. Click Activate to generate the code for the headline box.

BuzzBoost

Want to share more than just the headline of your post? BuzzBoost makes it easy. Just fill out your options, then click Activate. The JavaScript code can then be pasted onto any website to create a RSS feed box with anywhere between 1 to 15 posts.

Email Subscriptions

A lot of people would rather get their blog posts in their inbox, rather than having to visit your blog all the time or learn to use an RSS reader.

That’s easy, with email subscriptions. Just activate it, then once people are signed up they’ll automatically get your blog posts by email.

Ping Shot

Instead of having other services refresh your feed, constantly taking up your bandwidth, you can just tell Feedburner to send those services a “ping” of data whenever you update your blog.

All you need to do is click Activate.

Feed Count

If you want to show off how many subscribers you have on your RSS feed, all you need to do is publish your Feed Count.

Select your button and text color and select whether you want a static or animated button. Then click Activate to generate the code.

Socialize

Want to automatically post to your Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts? Feedburner allows you to easily link other accounts to your feed.

Anytime you post on your blog, the post will also automatically be posted to the account(s) you specify.

To add more accounts to post to, just click “Manage Connections.” Under formatting options, select how you want your posts to look, then click Activate to link the accounts.

Additional Tools

The tools we’ve just covered are the most important tools for publicizing your feed. In addition, there are also a few more tools and options you can change in the publicize options.

Chicklet Chooser: Select a slightly different button to take people to your RSS feed.
Creative Commons: Choose the type of copyright your feed is protected under.
Password Protector: Require a password for people to read your feed. Note that this will deactivate the email subscription option.
NoIndex: Deny search engines access from your feed.

These are all the tools available to you in FeedBurner’s publicize tools. As you can tell, it’s easy to publish and use your RSS feed in many different ways, whether it’s on your website, your Facebook page or even a friend’s software.

Blogging with Twitter Feed – A Tool for Content Syndication

by Nicole Munoz

If you regularly post your blog posts to Twitter and Facebook, why not have someone else do it for you instead? Twitter Feed will take your RSS feed, visit it every 30 minutes or so, find updates and automatically post them to Twitter and/or Facebook for you.

You can customize it to just post the title, the description or both. You can even include a thumbnail image on Facebook. It’s easy to setup and maintain and can save you a lot of time if you blog regularly.

Here’s how to setup Twitter Feed. Before you start, please have an RSS feed already setup, as well as a Twitter account and a Facebook account that you’re logged into.

Step 1: Click Register

Go to http://www.twitterfeed.com. Click “Register” to begin the setup process.

Step 2: Complete the Registration Form

Fill out your email and password, then click “Create Account.”

Step 3: Enter Your RSS Feed

You’ll immediately begin the setup process. Enter your RSS feed into the topmost box.

Step 4: Advanced Settings (Optional)

Click the “Advanced Settings” dropdown box to change the update frequency, sorting, level of detail to each post and so on. Click Step 2 when finished.

Step 5: Select Service, Twitter

Select whichever service you want to link to your RSS feed. Here we’ll start with Twitter, then show Facebook.

Step 6: Authenticate Twitter

Click the “Authenticate Twitter” button to verify that you’re the owner of the account.

If you’re already logged in, Twitter will prompt you with an authorization box.

Once authenticated, click “Create Service” to continue.

Step 7: Select Service, Facebook

If you just want to connect Twitter, then just click “All Done!” instead. If you want to add Facebook as well however, click on Facebook to repeat the process.

Step 8: Authenticate Facebook

Facebook will go through a similar process. Click “Connect with Facebook” to begin.

Click on “Allow” to grant TwitterFeed permission to post to your wall and pages.

Finally, select which page or wall you want Facebook to post to, then click Create Service.

If you want to post to multiple Facebook pages, create another RSS link.

Step 9: Complete Setup

Click on “All Done!” on the services page once both Twitter and Facebook are setup.

Finally, your setup completion page will be displayed.

Any time you post a blog post, within about 30 minutes Twitter Feed will read the post and post it on your Facebook page/wall as well as your Twitter feed. It’s that easy!

Why you should consider Amazon before opening your next ecommerce store!

by Nicole Munoz

Many of you know I got started online when I opened up my very first ecommerce store. I love ecommerce sites. I still have my ecommerce sites. We still sell products every single day from my ecommerce sites.

Lately I have been getting phone calls from people asking me to help them build their ecommerce stores. We work on Yahoo, Volusion, OSCommerce and many other platforms and a lot of people like the fact that I don’t just sell ecommerce design and marketing… but I do it for my own sites! The thing is, most people are surprised when I tell them that before even building out their own site, the very first thing that I want to see them do is to get their products onto Amazon. Let me explain why.

SEO used to be easy. You could put up your site. Follow the rules. Get #1 in Google. Get lots of traffic and sales. Done. Today it does not work like that. Today Google is showing sites in the top results that are authority sites. The thing with being an authority site is that you have to have traffic to be an authority site. So if you are depending on Google to send you that traffic to become an authority site to get ranked number one to get traffic… you see the problem? =)

So today it is even more important to get your products out there on as many channels as possible! You need to look at Google and SEO as one channel to get more sales. But not the only channel and possibly not the most important channel.

So what is a channel anyways? A channel is simply another pathway towards sales. All successful companies know that it is important to not be dependent on one channel. You could have an affiliate program. That affiliate program is a channel as it drives sales. You could use PPC to drive traffic and sales. That is another channel. You could have a team of re-sellers or sales reps. They are another channel. The key is to setup multiple distribution channels to sell your products in as many places as possible.

I mean think about it. Would you rather have your products in one store? Or a chain of stores?

Think about it this way also. If you have a product what is the fastest way to get sales? Put up a brick and mortar store. Buy the shelving and decorate the store. Co-ordinate a ribbon cutting ceremony. Run ads in your local area. Pass out flyers. Invite all your friends.

Or….

Negotiate a deal with an established business that already has a lot of traffic and customers for a little bit of shelf space in their store.

That is what you get with Amazon.

Amazon already has the traffic. They already have thousands of visitors on their site every single day. They don’t only have visitors, but they have thousands of visitors with their wallets out ready to buy!

So why do I recommend ecommerce owners get on Amazon first even before they open up their own ecommerce website?

#1 Traffic

Amazon already has the traffic. You don’t have to wait to build your site, get the products up, write unique descriptions, begin an SEO and social media campaign or drive traffic with PPC. All the traffic is already there. You literally have to upload your products and wait for the sales.

#2 Market Research

Many times we don’t know if a product will sell or not. Did you know that there are major retailers that use Amazon to test whether or not they will carry a product in their retail stores? Brilliant! Instead of taking up expensive shelf space in a retail store to find out if a product will sell or not, you can now upload your digital versions of your products and test what the demand is even before you stock up.

#3 Amazon Fulfillment

One of the biggest benefits of Amazon is their Amazon fulfillment centers. By storing your products with Amazon, your products are available to be sold through the Amazon Prime Free Shipping Program. Your customers will also thank you because when your products are shipped through Amazon Fulfillment, you can get better shipping rates with UPS.

There are other channels to pay attention to. The other major channels are Ebay, NewEgg.com, Sears.com, and rakuten.com.

So before you start another ecommerce website, consider getting your products sold on Amazon first!

Need help setting up your Amazon store? We can help you from start to finish to get your products up in no time flat. Just give us a call and let’s get you added to Amazon in no time flat!

How to Verify Authorship of Your Guest Blog Posts

by Nicole Munoz

One of the challenges Google has had is the ability to verify content as high quality content. Many marketers and SEO agencies spent years spinning content into hundreds and thousands of versions and posting it to multiple websites all with links back to the main website. This helped the websites achieve top rankings in Google because at that time, the algorithm based a high quality website by how many links that site had.

Google has been trying to figure out a way to provide better search results for the end user. Their search engine is their primary product and it is in their best interest to give the best results possible. They then hired a team of Search Quality Raters to manually review the search results and provide data about the results. This was a step in the right direction, but not a long term solution!

When Google launched Google+ it seemed to the world that it was an attempt to compete with the social media powerhouses of Facebook and Twitter. Maybe it was. Today Google+ is much more than that. And those that have delayed jumping in and have been slow to adapt to another social network… now is the time.

Google+ has many benefits but the one I want to talk about today is how to use it to verify authorship of your guest blog posts. Google wants to know what content you have written. They want to know what content they can safely mark as “high quality” and show in the search results.

The path to verify your guest blog posts is quite straightforward. In essence, it is a reciprocal link from your Google+ profile to your guest blog post.

The reason why you would want to verify your content is two-fold. First, Google has stated that they will give preferential treatment to content that is verified. Second, the search listings of verified content have a special bonus. They have a picture of the person who wrote the content. This little picture should increase the click through rate of your listing.

Looking at that listing, what listing are your eyes drawn to? Yep! The one with the picture. In theory, if all other things are equal, the user would click on the listing with the picture, making the click through rate of your organic search listing improve.

So how do we verify authorship of our guest blog posts and get that little picture next to our post?

Step One: Link to your Google+ profile from your guest blog post.

In your author bio you can normally put in 2-3 links to your websites. It is not yet the norm, but will be soon, for sites to request the Google+ link also. Simply put a text link with your name and link it to your Google+ profile with the ?REL=AUTHOR at the end.

Step Two: Link From Your Google+ contributor section to your guest blog post.

You can add as many websites as you need to and you can also change the visibility so they don’t all have to show up on your profile if you don’t want them to.

And that is it!

Nicole Munoz is the CEO of http://www.StartRankingNow.com. Since 2010 Nicole has helped over 150 clients market their businesses online and has spoken at over 36 live events attended by more than 41,000 people. She has recently published a series of 10 books and DVDs on Amazon called 7 Figure Marketing Blueprint. To discover more about SEO and Content Marketing, sign up for a webinar with Nicole at http://webinars.nicolemunoz.com.

SEO: Why the first step just might be a website redesign!

by Nicole Munoz

A few years ago if someone said they just wanted SEO that meant that they just wanted link building. It was well known that even though Google said that if you wanted to get good rankings all you had to do was produce high quality content, the reality was that it was a number game of how many links you had to your site.

To many, SEO became simply doing off site link building.

Today this is not the case.

Today Google ranks sites based on different metrics. To get a site ranked today, you need to have a clean coded, user-friendly site that publishes high quality content that is loved, liked, and shared!

A website redesign is not exactly a separate project from SEO, but rather a part of it. There are certain elements that top ranking sites have in common. Some of these elements are things like social sharing bars. Other elements would be things like pagination or a dynamic navigation. In order to get the best SEO results in the shortest time possible, these elements should be added to a site.

So how can you tell if your site needs a re-design?

First, take a look at your code. The code of your website is how Google knows what your site is about. By placing keywords throughout your site, you can tell Google what your site is about. The key here is to not overdo it. If not done correctly you can actually hurt your site. Some of the places to check your code are the following:

Title Tag
Meta Description Tag
SEO Friendly URLs
Images named with keywords
Alt Text with Keywords

You can also run your site through a code validator tool to check other elements. Also be sure to check page load speed as well as if there are any errors on Google Webmaster Tools.

Next, take a look at how user friendly your site is. There are three basic metrics you can check to determine if Google thinks your site is user friendly or not.

Bounce Rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors on your site that immediately leave your site without clicking through to another page. So if Google sends you a visitor from the search results and that visitor immediately leaves your site, then they “bounced” off your site. Google interprets this to mean that the visitor did not find what they are looking for. Since Google wants to give their user the best results possible, they see this as a sign that your site is not relevant to the search results and your ranking is penalized. If your bounce rate is high, your site may need some re-design elements so that visitors don’t immediately leave your site.

Click Through Rate. Just like bounce rate, Google is looking at the click through rate of your site. The click through rate is the number of pages deep that your visitors travel through your site. If your site has too low of a click through rate, then Google interprets that to mean that your site was not very interesting.

The third way Google can tell if your site is user friendly is by how long your visitors are spending on your site. If they are on your site for less than thirty seconds or so, then it is clear to Google that they did not find what they were looking for.

Next, evaluate if you have a method to add high quality content that your market can share. This normally means… do you have a blog on your site? If not, then you need to add one. When adding a blog, the design of the blog normally matches the design of your site. If your site design is not something you absolutely love, then consider re-designing your site at the same time you add a blog to your site.

Finally, evaluate the lead capture pages of your site. Your website may sell physical products, but many forget that the best opportunity you have is to capture leads from your site so that you can market to them later. Even many sites that sell direct to consumer, could easily add a corporate or bulk buying area to their site. This can usually be accomplished by adding a separate area to the site that is structured with sales copy with the goal of capturing leads. Again, it is important that if you are going to add a new area to your website, that the site design be consistent.

So in review:

Check your code, usability, and ability to publish high quality content and create special landing pages on your site for specific target markets. If you can’t do these things or are limited, then maybe a website re-design is the right choice.

Are you ready for a site re-design? Schedule a free 20 minute site evaluation with me today.

On Site SEO: An Absolute Necessity!

by Nicole Munoz

If you want to get your site ranked fast, the best place to start is by making changes to your own site.

Here are some simple things that you can start checking right now!

Check your code. First, validate your code. Head on over to the w3 Validator. If your site has a lot of errors, you can either fix them, or invest in a re-design to have your site built right from the ground up.

Check your Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will tell you several things. First, it will tell you if you have duplicate content with your title and description tags. If so, fix those first. Second, check for broken links. Check for the number of pages indexed. If that number is going down and not up, you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Check if your sitemap has all of your URLs submitted.

Check your Google Analytics. Head on over to your Google Analytics account and check things like the bounce rate of your site. How many pages deep your visitors click through. How long your visitors are on your site. Don’t just look at the overall bounce rate for your site, but drill down to the specific landing pages that you want to rank. If the bounce rate for those pages is over 60% or so, then work on improving them to bring the bounce rate down. If your visitors are only on your site for 30 seconds, try adding video or other design elements to get them to stay longer.

Google search results for your website. You should see the following:

Picture – If your site is hooked up to your Google+ author account correctly, then your picture will show up next to your site.
Keywords in the Title Tag – The title tag of your site should generate as the title of your organic listing. If it does not, something is wrong.
Description – The description area of your organic listing should be the same as the meta tag on your site. This area should have benefits plus call to action listed.

If your Google search results are not rendering correctly, work on that!

Getting back to basics is usually one of the fastest ways to get results… and also one of the most overlooked!

If you need help, I offer an in depth SEO Site Audit through my company Start Ranking Now, Inc. The SEO Site audit runs from between $500 and $2500 depending on how deep of an audit you need and how complex your site is.

To get started, contact me today!

How to do SEO in 2013

by Nicole Munoz

Unless you have just opened up your online business, then you are well aware that SEO has fundamentally changed over the last 12 months.

For years Google has been saying that if you want to rank, then you must have a high quality site. The problem was, that the sites that were ranking were not necessarily high quality sites, but sites that had the most links.

There were many schools of thought as to what you needed to do.

Those that followed the instructions of Google to just create high quality content, were frustrated as they knew that what they were doing SHOULD work… after all they were following the rules that Google laid out!

Others hedged their bets and built links from relevant sites to their sites in addition to producing high quality content.

And yet others relied solely on building a massive quantity of links without any discrimination of site being relevant or not.

Those that simply relied on link building were hit about February 2012. Those that had hedged their bets and were trying to both give Google what they wanted, yet also get immediate results as well weren’t hit until about April of 2012.

And the sites that just built quality content without doing any marketing… well they are still waiting for top rankings.

So what still works now? What does a business owner need to do today in 2013 to get top rankings in Google?

Well it is not that simple.

Today Google is truly ranking quality and authoritative sites. But what makes a site quality in the eyes of Google? What makes a site authoritative? What do we need to do to get a site ranked in 2013?

Clean Code. Does your site have html errors, php errors, broken divs, or obsolete code? Does the site load quickly?

Awesome User Experience. Are customers staying on your page? Are they reading more than one page or just one? Are they staying on the site or quickly leaving?

Fresh High Quality Content. Your site must have a blog and you must be publishing to it regularly. You don’t have to publish every day. But what you do publish must be high quality. And you can’t put up articles posing as blog posts!

Social Media Signals. Your business needs to have a presence on social media for many reasons… SEO being one of them. Social media used the right way is how you can promote your blog content to get likes, shares, tweets, and comments.

Author Rank. You must connect your site to your Google+ account and also connect all of your blog authors to their Google+ accounts as well. Google is looking for more transparency. They don’t want to have personas on Google+.

Links. Yes you still need links but before you run out and get more, you might need to get rid of some. If your site has a lot of links from spammy sites, you will first have to get those links removed. You still need to get high quality links to your site but fewer is better. All links should be earned links. For example, if you are a guest on a radio show and the radio show has a website, they would link to you so their listeners can find your site easier. If you have true news and you publish a press release and the real media picks it up, that is fine. Article directories, web 2.0 sites, and any other type of manufactured link is no longer part of SEO for 2013.

There you have it! Focus on those six things and your site will get back on track!

If you would like an extra set of eyes to check out your site and show you exactly what you need to do to get your site on track, just contact me and ask about the SEO Site Audit. SEO Site Audits start at $1500 and go up to $5,000 depending on the size of your site.

Was 2012 The Year That SEO Changed Forever?

by Nicole Munoz

Is there any question that SEO has changed significantly over the last year? Just take a look at what some of the industry leaders have to say.

In the end this also means that thinking of SEO as a series of steps no longer makes sense. SEO is no longer the practice of techniques that when combined together allow you to rank better. Instead SEO now really means creating cool things online that other people recognize as cool and talk about. It’s not just backlinks, it’s Twitter mentions, Facebook buzz, and everything else from the social media universe.

– Morgan Linton, Lessons from 2012: The Year SEO Changed Forever

To say SEO has “changed a lot” would be the understatement of the decade.

– Hubspot, 17 Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2013

People did anything they could to source inbound links and were rewarded with high rankings. However, this is no longer the case. It’s 2012 and search engines are quite sophisticated. Link building, along with a host of other old SEO techniques, no longer cut the mustard, and as a result, those of us in the SEO community have had to change.

– SEOMoz, How To Do SEO in 2013

Yesterday, search relevance was about quantity of message. Build a good website, build enough links to it, and you could easily deliver wins. But today, search relevance is about clarity of message. It’s about having the right message, on the right channel, at the right time. It’s about creating a world where products and services sell themselves.

– SlingshotSEO, Horses and Bayonets: Has the Nature of SEO Changed?

Like it or not, SEO has changed and its future relies upon a complex relationship with content marketing, social media, and collaborative technology.

– SearchEngineWatch, Future of SEO Change, Convergence, Collaboration

In early 2012, Google has gone a step further.

This time, they have changed the way they treat backlinks to a website in terms of their ability to rank. This new update seems to have 2 separate aspects:

1. Google seems to have penalized websites that went overboard with automated linking. For example, website owners that used automated tools to create 100′s or 1000′s of spammy blog comment links have now seen their rankings dropped significantly. Similarly, website owners that participated in automated linking networks to build a high volume of links per month have also seen rankings drop significantly. This was a good thing. But…

2. Google also seems to have put a filter in place that actually penalizes website pages based on the anchor text of the backlinks to that page. In other words, using the previous “blue widgets” example, if a large percentage of the backlinks to a website page about “blue widgets” had the link anchor text “blue widgets”, that page may no longer rank as highly.

In my opinion, Google has failed in this most recent update

Shawn Nafziger, Google Changes the SEO Game

Seo hasn’t “died”, but it has certainly changed dramatically. For one instance, back links now need to be earned, rather than created. That is one of the main rules now, covering the links that come back to the websites you are promoting. Links that carried a lot of value, for example article links, are now only really useful for adding a little bit of diversity to your link profile, the same with generic press releases that do not offer anything more than 400 words of empty writing.

For a long time the SEO world (in many, rather than in all cases) lazily adding masses of links to clients sites, many of which were empty and built just for the fact they would be a back link, was THE strategy. Finally in 2012 Google played the swan song for sites optimized so (or was it a Penguin song?). Sites disappeared from page 1 of Google quicker than a bowling ball dropped in the backyard swimming pool. Tears were shed, cries of unfairness echoed around the online marketing world. Much as I may have sympathy, I can’t help feeling that we should all have seen this coming. It is not as if the search engine gods at Google hadn’t explained to us all year after year, what they expected from those practicing SEO, and how to keep on the right side of search relevance, when promoting theirs or their clients sites.

Search Engine Journal, Is P.C.P the New SEO?

What do you think? Was your site affected by the algorithm changes this last year?